High Sierra Topix

I just spent at least an hour in a HST post window for Mavericks Mission Peak hike from last Sunday creating image links and then commenting on how the hike went. I was of course logged in. When I finished that awful window came up complaining that I needed to log in again and I knew exactly what was then going to occur because that has very annoyingly happened to me a few times in the past. Usually I never craft up a post in forum post windows because I learned long ago that sometimes one ends up losing everything typed. Thus tend to do so in notepad and then copy and paste when done. But for some reason this time did not notice I was still in the board window and yes all my work was gone because after it times out, one re-logs in, and one goes back to the previous post window it is all blank.

In the past this has happened and I meant to complain but never did. So am doing so here. As an old hi tech person using the Internet since earliest days and on a long list of forums over years, the login timeout period for highsierratopix.com is the shortest time of any web forum I've experienced and don't know why it was made so. Probably because like me, others simply have not bothered to complain. However others must have surely been burned like this of course too. In any case, in the future I will be even more careful to NEVER EVER use website post windows for anything but short inputs. Please fix this.

David

David,

First of all, sorry you're experiencing issues.

Second, while I've always done what I can to accommodate all reasonable requests, I owe you only what's stated in the HST Terms and Conditions everyone agrees to upon registration. Based upon the tone of your request you might want to re-familiarize yourself with those, linked to in the footer of all HST pages.

Finally, tight timeout settings are not a policy of HST as you assume. In fact, they're currently set to allow you as much time as you need. See below. They are set to zero or infinite.
Some ISP's use proxies which connect to the forum, instead of you direct (such as AOL, SBC/AT&T, etc). In such cases your IP will or can change mid session, and the forum software will then assume you are not the same person, but someone trying to break in via the session code (a security feature). The security feature, because of that, will require you to log in again. There may be a handful of like cases out there, but because you are the first person I've heard a complaint about this issue in a very, very long time I suspect this possible cause might be the problem. There is one theoretical work around that I just found online (untested) but I've also read that it would be at the expense of lowering security settings meant to protect you, me and the other 8,000+ members of HST. Sorry, but I'm not willing to make that change.

I've used the "save draft" capability on the bottom left corner of the post window for long posts. I save every once in a while. It could be a work around. Note it doesn't save uploaded image tags or so it appeared. I post those last.

Good suggestion Russ. Thank you.

Not blaming you Eric. Unless someone brings an issue up you cannot expect to deal with it. I had the chance to straighten this out in the past by simply bringing the matter up like this but as noted I never bothered because in any case it is a borderline trivial minor manner. Am pissed currently as noted because I didn't create the post in a notepad window and lost all the input. And the reason is because at least from my understanding was because the HST login timeout is so short when I unintentionally use the forum window.

This has been the situation for as long as I can recall and occurs every day I am moving about between various websites that is more often on desktops versus a smartphone. I'll log in and then return an hour or two later and will need to login again which only occurs with HST.

I just looked at the Terms and Conditions link again and have seen that in the past. It does not have anything about login periods nor does the posting page you are showing with input fields for minutes. Don't know how to get into that page? So indeed as you noted it isn't anything your site has been responsible for versus stated policy. But it is something if it is short that I would prefer to be lengthened.

David

You've posted from an unusually high number of IP addresses/domains over the years. Do you run through a proxy? Have you checked your cookie settings on the browsers you use? As a fellow geek, I run lots of security software and custom browser and firewall settings/extensions that most people don't use. Assuming you do too? Let's start there and try to strike that from the list of possibilities first.

Checking another box, I just un-banned all banned IP addresses to see if that might be part of the problem. We've had some issues with one of the primary ISPs you use (regional even) but some new alternative security features make IP bans less important. There's a chance at some point or another you may have been assigned one of those IPs.

Thanks Eric appreciated. I should have expected login algorithms are more involved with security than some simple login timeout period. At the time I was home on my desktop and had kept the HST window open though several other windows are usually open on my monitor. Unsure if I am being logged out at home regularly but that is the situation at my workplace where I may be working from several places all on 100 mbps fiber lines. Indeed might have been on a less secure ip list? Will provide feedback if there is any change at my workplace next week. Regret the whiny tone of the opening post as I was not happy at the time haha. (:

David

No worries. I completely understand the frustration!

I myself, have always been just a bit leery of 100 mbps fiber lines, and much prefer fiber lines of 100.02 mbps or greater. Harlen.